Switcher brings you Mac Expose to Windows

Switcher is a free software that brings you near perfect feel of Expose feature in MAC. Vista and Seven gives a stacked view of all the open windows when you press Win+Tab key. But it is really annoying to go over the list of windows to select one. I have played with Expose only a few times but I really loved that. As expected, Win 7 did not come up with that feature. Switcher that does this job perfect on Win 7 and hopefully on Vista as well. I have been using Switcher for a couple of weeks and haven't had any problems so far. I have hardly used ALT+Tab in these two weeks. A snapshot from my comp(running Win 7).

You can download Switcher here. This blog explains some of the basics of Switcher usage and configuration along with nice screenshots.

Google Chrome Bookmark Sync

A long awaited feature in Chrome has finally arrived. Bookmarks Sync feature is already available in Firefox through lot of addons (esp X-marks). Now Chrome 4 has this feature built in. Upgrade to Chrome 4 Beta and you can see an option "Synchronize my bookmarks" under the wrench menu. Login with your google account and you all set. The bookmarks will be autosync-d thereafter and can also be retrieved from any other system with Chrome 4. Remember that this is a BETA version so may see some crashes once in a while. Google Toolbar used to store bookmarks under Google Notebook, which is no longer in development. Chrome bookmarks are now stored in your Google Docs.

Terminator

I have been using GNU Screen for quite some time when I work on remote servers through SSH. It allows me to switch between different screens in a jiffy, split screens horizontally and vertically, search for a string in the scrolled text and above all it saves the session. I really missed the split screen and search functionality while working with the traditional terminal window in Ubuntu. I used GNU Screen within terminal window to get those missing functionalities. Finally I found this tool, Terminator - a nice equivalent of GNU Screen that does a better job. The controls are so easy to split screens, switch between screens, text search, etc... You can even manipulate it graphically say, drag and drop to change positions, resize individual screens, which is not available in GNU Screen. Check out the Terminator manual for more info.

Add a Nautilus launcher

Many times you may have to execute your programs as root user in Ubuntu and we most often use 'sudo' when working in a terminal. However, the files and directories created under sudo will be not be accessible by the default user from the File Explorer. It can be circumvented by launching a nautilus window from the terminal.
$gksudo nautilus

You can also add a launcher on your desktop and set the command of that launcher to "gksudo nautilus". Double-clicking on that launcher would launch a File Explorer with root permission. You can do pretty much everything you do as a sudo in command line.

Select the wx version while importing

My ubuntu 9.04 had wx python version 2.6 by default and I installed version 2.8 for one of my lab work. But I wasn't aware of the fact before that 9.04 runs wx 2.6 by default. Initially, my project did not work due to unknown methods associated with the wx python objects I used. I had to then google to find out which version has these methods and which one lacks. I finally figured out by few trial and errors that python (2.5) on my system chose wxpython 2.6 by default. Fortunately, wx now offers a new package called wxversion which you can use to select the version of wxpython you wish to run if you have multiple versions of wxpython installed.

import wxversion
wxversion.select("2.8")
import wx #imports wxpython 2.8

If the requested version is not found, it selects the default version (2.6 in this case). You can find more information regarding this in wxversion.py file included in your python distribution. ( e.g. /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/wxversion.py or /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/wxversion.py).

You can also dynamically check the version of wxpython you have imported using wx constants.

>>> print wx.VERSION_STRING #returns version as a string
2.8.10.1
>>> print wx.VERSION #returns version values in a tuple
(2, 8, 10, 1, '')

Stop auto indenting in vim while pasting text

Many times I had the autoindent issue when I paste text into vim in a terminal or a putty window. each line of the text used to indent at increasing levels. That annoyed me much especially whenever I paste too many lines. I used to work around it by disabling the auto indent (:set noai) before pasting and enabling it later. Now I found a much easier way than this.

:set pastetoggle=<F3>

The key to pastetoggle need not be F3. can be any key. Just press F3 before pasting (either in COMMAND mode or INSERT mode) and the pasted content won't be autoindented. Press F3 again to toggle back to normal. To keep this key persistent, add it to your vimrc file in your $HOME directory.

Not able to install any package on Ubuntu 9.04

Starting a new tech stream on my blog to share my knowledge. And of course, it would help me when I come across the same issue in future. Here goes my first post.

I tried to install Ubuntu 9.04 using Wubi today. Wubi really made my work a lot simpler than installing Ubuntu on a separate partition. For those who don't know about Wubi, its a Ubuntu installer for Windows. It just creates a file in Windows for the size you specify (min of 5GB) and installs Ubuntu there. You can uninstall it as a normal program from Add/Remove programs feature.
The complete installation process (Ubuntu download + installation setup) was done in 30 minutes. But to my dismay, I was not able to install any new package or software either through apt-get or synaptic package manager. I wasn't even able to install vim due to a stupid error which I did not understand.

$sudo apt-get install vim

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package vim is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package vim has no installation candidate

The same error is thrown for all packages. After some googling, I got rid of this error by doing an update for the package manager.

$sudo apt-get update

-this command updated the package manager and thereafter I was able to install any new package thru synaptic and apt-get as well.

thendral vanthu theendum pothu

I have heard this song infinite times. But still, the mesmerizing rendition by Raja sir and Janaki makes me speechless everytime. It brings goose bumps on me whenever I listen with headphones. One of the few magicals of Raja sir that I doubt he himself might not be able to repeat this composition. I vaguely remember that the film "Avatharam" (which features this song) released during my high school days. Perhaps in 7th or 8th standard. Though I have seen this song several times on TV, I could not conceive the complete feel of the song that time. I just used to change the channels. I heard it in heard phones for the first time when I got my own computer and a headset in my undergrad days. I just closed my eyes and could not take my attention anywhere in that 5 minutes. The captivating music and magnetic voice of Raja sir and Janaki just swept me along. I did not have words to express my feel after listening to this song. Raja Raja than !!!

Winter Break

Wooh!! Its been 162 days since I landed in US and it just passed like 16 days. Somehow I managed to score decent marks in my first sem. Hope I will continue that. After a hectic period of 4 months of studies, the much expected winter break started. Like everyone, I had come across such long breaks during school and undergrad days. But this break gave me altogether a different experience than all the previous breaks. Last semester officially ended on Dec 17th and I was all set to leave to Orlando, Florida on Dec 19th. I was very much excited about this trip not because of the rides and shows at Disney or Universal Studios but for the golden time with my friends. It was actually a five day trip and I missed the first two days due to my RA work. Nevertheless, those three days were full of fun with lot of manga and mokkais. The trip kicked off at Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios. The extra 30 bucks we paid for the express tickets helped us to by pass the lengthy line for some of the shows. The pamplet showed the Hulk ride is the most extreme of the rides available there. But to our surprise, it was not even 1/3rd of what we experienced at Cedar Point, Ohio. That was truly thrlling. We spent the second half of the day at the other park. Of all the rides and shows, we enjoyed Shrek 4D, Spiderman, Simpson ride and Twister the most. The day finally ended at Woodlands Hotel. Had nice Sambar vadai, poori, dosa, idli etc.. It reminded me days when we used to go from Bangalore to Hosur just to have dinner. Almost every other dish that we order would be tried by everyone. Those times were priceless. This was followed by a nice late night maanga and thanni session at the hotel. As usual, we started a bit late to Disney Land. Except few, most of the shows at Disney were exclusively designed for kids and hence it was not exciting as Universal Studios. Space Mountain was quite a different roller-coaster experience where the entire ride happens in the dark. We missed the much hyped parade at Magic Kingdom but managed to watch the show at Cindrella Castle, followed by fireworks. We left Disney at 11PM and everyone was damn tired. We planned to go to NASA the next day but everyone was somewhat bored of repeated 3D and 4D shows in the past two days. Hence we tried some of the untouched beaches near Orlando. The weather was so bad that we could not even take out our jackets on the sea shores. At night, we again went to Woodlands but got a nice bulb as it was closed. :(

I came back home on Tuesday afternoon and all of my roommates had gone out of town on Wednesday itself. I spent the next 5 days alone at home before leaving to my sister's house at New Jersey on next Tuesday. I set my speakers in the hall and the new couch was perfect to enjoy watching movies. I had never before seen 4 movies a day. I watched a total of 14 movies in 4 days. But on Monday, I heard the shocking news about the sudden demise of my paternal grandfather. He was the taproot of our family and one of the human I admire the most. It disturbed me a lot and thanks to Raja's Thiruvasagam which was the only companion to me for the next 36 hours till I reached my sister's house at NJ. After five months, had home made food. My sister's a year old kid got along with me instantly and I had good time playing with him. On Friday, I went to Liberty Island and my friend Nithya joined me at the Newport. The weather was so bad that my fingers started paining though I was wearing gloves. Somehow we managed and it almost took a complete day. We then had a nice dinner (supposedly snacks) at Saravana Bhavan, NY before departing. On Saturday, me and my uncle tried ice skating nearby our house. It was not as easy as I expected. We were ashamed on seeing small children skating so easily and we didn't even take our hands from the rails. :)

On Monday, my trips in this winter break came to a end. I was back to square one from the next day. Every day went with few hours at lab and probably one or two movies and few NBA games. Till today, I have seen nearly 30 movies in the past 25 days, which is quite a high number for me. With just three days to go before Spring sem starts, this break passed sooner than I expected. Hope this semester goes better than or as good as last semester. Wish everyone a very happy new year!